ART: Creature feature

Posted: Thursday, October 11, 2007

Sprawled out across nearly half of ATHICA's gallery space, Mickey Mouse, in gargantuan, air-filled form, offers a message about as subtle as a Hummer. Clad in army fatigues, eyes wide and empty, Mickey, or "Dead Mouse," by Miami artist Billie Grace Lynn, lies dead on the ground, a river of blood pooling from his mouth in the shape of the United States.

Unlike the SUV that so conspicuously embodies American consumption, though, Mickey is a statement of lament regarding where we are as a country. And his layered message is one of the many forms animals offer in the gallery's current exhibition, "Animal Instincts: Allegory and Anthropomorphism," a show that takes a complex look at the roles and messages animals hold in our lives.

As exhibit curator Melissa Link points out, among other things, Mickey reminds us not just of dead soldiers in Iraq, but of the likely outcome of our Capitalist economy; of innocence lost.

"I think there are many layers to this piece," she says, noting an emptiness in the sculpture itself - its form, all air, dependent on a fan.

An admitted animal lover, Link says the show is meant to appeal to a greater part of that animal-lover tendency in people like her. We're reared with animals in one form or another from our earliest stages of development, she notes in the exhibition catalog: "We lay our babies down to sleep with stuffed bears and tales of frogs and princes, hapless pigs and the Big Bad Wolf." And because they're so close to us, we take animals and their roles in our lives for granted.

"This show definitely goes beyond that," Link says.

As proof, there's the disturbing series of photographs by St. Louis artist Jessica May, in which the artist dresses dead-by-the- roadside opossums and raccoons in infant clothes and other accouterments. Her work was picked up by the national press earlier this year. "I think this is my way of slowing down and paying homage to these animals," she said in one article, noting she wanted to see if people paid more attention to the animals if they were dressed as humans.

Louise Zjawin Francke takes a different approach to a similar theme with her collection of reproductions of a few great masterworks, refigured with endangered animals. In Arnolfini's famous "Wedding Chamber," for instance, the couple is replaced by lemurs; in Ingres' "The Princess Broglie," it's a puma, and Vermeer's "Girl with a Flute" features a rhinoceros. The work is as powerful for its glossy, gorgeous reproductive quality as for its concise message.

A more cryptic message is found in Florida artist Heidi Jensen's especially creepy drawings, "Leak" and "Blush," in which rabbit ears and legs are merged with bruised and bulbous human bodies. Similarly, Jacqueline Meeks' "Horse Girl" and "Shark Boy" drawings blend human anatomy with animals.

To be sure, this isn't a show that features the fluffy side of animal life, but rather looks at humankind's corruptive tendencies when it comes to the natural world. Margi Weir's large and impressive "Tapestry of Flight" follows along those lines, as flying birds and insects give way to airplanes, astronauts and bombs.

While the exhibit features a number of national artists, Athens artists represent half the show - among them Kenny Aguar, Matt Blanks, Jill Carnes, Andrew Cayce, Joe Havasy, Rosemary Mendicino, Dan Smith, Beth Thompson and Jeffrey Whittle.

Link, who's been involved in the Athens arts scene for a number of years, says she'd wanted for a long time to curate a show featuring works by these artists, and justifiably so. Cayce's brilliantly colored acrylic paintings practically give off their own light, while Mendicino - who like Cayce hasn't shown work in Athens in some time - offers a welcome return with her lit "Butterflygirl" and "Minotaurman," mixed-media creations conjured from hand-made ceramics and found objects.

Aguar, a correspondent for Marquee, provides "Triptych," a fascinating collage work telling an intricate story about the fall of man. And Whittle's lovely oil compositions "Birdland" and "Yin-Yang Rounders" feature birds resting atop turtles and cowboys in a show-down riding atop catfish, respectively, with maps incorporated within the compositions.

For the most part, "Animal Instincts" is a show that challenges our associations with the animal world, which is part of what makes it so intriguing. Through the works of these artists, we see animals in a new way and are asked to reexamine our relationships to these creatures with whom we are so closely intertwined.

The exhibit is on display through Nov. 11, with a number of affiliated events, including a benefit for animal-related causes on Friday and a Doggy Costume Party on Oct. 20.